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Soundtrack of Survival: Composing for Character, Conflict
warming up MAN: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Carlton Cuse. applause CARLTON CUSE: It could not be more fitting that tonight we present the symphonic premiere of Michael Giacchino's music for Lost in Honolulu with the Honolulu Symphony Pops Orchestra. When you look at the television landscape, there are really only a few shows that, if you were to close your eyes, you could identify by their music. I believe Lost is one of those. It really is a testament to Michael's genius as a composer. And now it is my great pleasure to introduce our conductor, Tim Simonec. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: The first thing I wrote for Lost was the first scene, was when Jack's eye opens at the very beginning. minimalist music panting music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: It was really just unsettling for me because, you know, plane crashes are never a good thing. You're trying to have fun writing music for this. I remember thinking it was exciting to be part of something that was different. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Almost every single show on television is synthesized. When we first started talking about the music, we wanted to do it live. MAN: OK, ladies and gentlemen. We're working on the first episode of a new series called Lost. Again, we are trying to put an orchestra on television. cheering MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Whenever you're ready. MAN: Yeah. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: As scary and uneasy as the show is, it's also really emotional. And nothing can convey that kind of an emotion as well as live players sitting in a room playing music. music J.J. ABRAMS: What Michael and I talked about at the beginning of Lost was creating that sense of mystery and the feeling that this island has an epic scale and scope that is unusual for TV. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: So the Honolulu Symphony expressed interest in doing music from Lost. At every step, I kept thinking, "This will never happen." I didn't get my hopes up, 'cause it would be so fun. And yet, they kept calling, we kept having more meetings. It kept bulldozing, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then, the next thing you knew, we were there in Hawaii doing this thing. chattering MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Mai Tais at six. Right? 6:00. WOMAN: Are you smiling? How was it? SAMANTHA THOMAS: It's this beautiful environment at the Shell, the Waikiki Shell. It seats about 6,500 people. We thought we can do something magical. It felt outside of the box. applause MICHAEL GIACCHINO: I just wanna say that, honestly, I'm honored to be here with you tonight because, for me, to have this concert take place here in Hawaii is the most special thing that could happen for the show and for all who've been working on the show for a long time. There's nowhere in the world I would rather do it than here. I'm so happy we were able to make this happen. DAMON LINDELOF: I'm in complete and utter awe of the music on the show. music DAMON LINDELOF: It is every bit as important of a character as Locke, Jack, Kate or the island. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: Giacchino is one of the creative linchpins of this show. BRYAN BURK: He doesn't really need to be told what needs to be there because he knows. He's a storyteller. And it's why it's such a great experience, because you know he's going to deliver exactly what we need. STEPHEN WILLIAMS: Giacchino is God. Let's be succinct and concise. Giacchino is God. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: They always say, "Would you like to read scripts first?" I always say, "Absolutely not." Because I want the music to be as reactive and as just primal as the reactions of the audience watching it. So I wanna be as surprised as anyone sitting in their living room. So, what I do is sit down with an episode and watch from the beginning. The second I feel there needs to be music, that's what I'll write: music. music CLAIRE: You know, I'm not giving up on you either, Charlie. It's going to be OK. You're going to be OK. EMILIE DE RAVIN: You watch a scene when it's just cut without music and it's there, it's fabulous, but then you add the music, it adds so much drama, it can add tension, it can add suspense, or it can add sort of remorse. music MICHAEL EMERSON: We hear that trembling low note on a cello and, all of a sudden, we tighten up a little bit, don't we? 'Cause we know something's coming. JORGE GARCIA: I mean, sure, the scene can make your eyes water. But throw the music on it, you'll cry. music ELIZABETH MITCHELL: There'll be something where I'm like, "I should have played stronger, should have done this." Music does it. It lifts you. You're like, "Thank you." So...love it. beeping JULIET: If you have to...kill them. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: So I wanted the audience to feel the same way the characters were feeling. To me, that was to come up with some strange ensemble of instruments and use that on a constant basis to score the show. music stops MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Cool. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: That's been a goal on the show, to find different ways to use the instruments. To look at the harp and go, "What else can we do with this that you normally wouldn't do with it?" Whether you hit it with something or just pluck it with your nail. Use them in unexpected ways. While strings can be used to be very emotional and all of that, we can also use them to really scratch. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: It gives this crazy, frightening sound. sounding in unison MICHAEL GIACCHINO: We have trombones, of course, which are the big...have become the joke on the show, in a way, I guess. The act-outs where you hear that trombone sound thing. KATE: Where are you going? JACK: To find John Locke. blaring trombones J.J. ABRAMS: trombone sound I'm like, "You have to stop doing that." As a joke, he's like, "One per show." BRYAN BURK: What's that thing it does at the end? MAN: sound Those are trombones. BRYAN BURK: Let's talk about the flugelhorn. I love it. BRYAN BURK: I used to refer to it as the flugelhorn. I didn't know what it was. I kept saying, "Can we not have the flugelhorn there?" We'd bicker with each other about having it here but not here. Using it there, not there. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: The sounds became this signature sound of the show, which wasn't the original intention. It was to give some weird...To leave you feeling uneasy in the way that the show is constantly inventing stories that are completely unexpected. The idea is to do the same thing with the instruments. building music dramatic music music ERIC SHIN: We just got an instrument listing. On the instrument, it said "airplane wing." They brought the door from the set. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: On the first season, airplane parts were a big part of the percussion setup. They would bang on airplane things and use them as drums, essentially. ERIC SHIN: I love the show. I watch it all the time. So it's pretty cool to sit back and play it. MAN: Remember, this is number 16. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: We had two rehearsals. You know, a few hours each. Each piece we were able to run through once. TIM SIMONEC: I guess I'll start from the beginning. Let's go. From the beginning. One, two, three... MICHAEL GIACCHINO: I felt there should be some sort of through-line which connects everything. I wanted Terry, from day one, the only person I thought of was Terry O'Quinn. I wanted him to do readings of some sort. So the writers got together and wrote beautiful letters. The conceit is he walks on with a bottle and it's filled with letters. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: You can pull the top one out. TERRY O'QUINN: No problem. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Then this can just stay there the whole time. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: They'll explain in detail the emotions and goings-on of people on the island. With Terry reading it, you can't go wrong. 'Cause, come on, the guy's got the greatest voice ever. You know? TERRY O'QUINN: "Dear Joanna. I remember asking you if you were stuck on a deserted island, what would you take with you? It's been driving me mad thinking about all the things I wish I had, so I got up today and decided to think of all the things I'm glad I left behind. I don't miss money. Or traffic. Or e-mail." SAMANTHA THOMAS: We wanted the symphony to feel like you were immersed in the world of Lost in every way. So from having the hatch open and the smoke come out, or we had torches to represent the Others as they ran through the jungle with the flames. We wanted to honor the Hawaiian culture as well, who's so incredibly supportive and immersed into our show and our music. music SAMANTHA THOMAS: So we brought actual local players in, with the ukulele player, to bring out different parts of Hawaiian culture. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: I think it should just be ukulele. Tim? When the uke starts, it should just be ukulele. TIM SIMONEC: OK. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Not both. You have the guitar on the faster stuff. guitar playing MICHAEL GIACCHINO: The thing about Lost was you never hear it with woodwinds. You never hear it with a lot...trumpets. You never hear it with instruments that fill out an orchestra. So not only were we having to reformat the pieces to fit as, uh, concert music, we also had to re-orchestrate everything. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: One guy will keep going. Another comes in at a different interval. MAN: OK. Minor third. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Creating this chord. It'll just keep building where it's repeating, but it's building. Know what I mean? MAN: OK. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Bringing in strings, blah, blah, blah. MAN: Too high for trumpets, perhaps? MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Yeah. But strings and winds will be nice up there, you know? You have trumpets underneath. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: It was interesting to hear familiar melodies, but just in a much bigger sense. up-tempo music JORGE GARCIA: It was fun. It was cool 'cause I loved recognizing it and figuring out...I was like, "Oh, yeah." music You know. Like, "Marching," you know. Go...go kill the polar bear. Things like that. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: The thing I couldn't have counted on, or didn't think about in the beginning, was how many themes there would be in the show. ominous music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Each character ended up with their own theme. Some of them ended up with a couple of themes because certain characters have very distinct story lines that are either one thing or the other. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Some of the favorite stuff that I love working with again and again is Hurley's music 'cause it's such a nice contrast from what the show normally is. Hurley's episodes have a bit of light-heartedness, and yet there's also this deep sadness. So he's got about three different themes. WOMAN: ...16 and 23... MICHAEL GIACCHINO: He kind of has his numbers theme which is about dealing with the fact that he won the lottery. ominous music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Then he has this awkward theme, which is him kind of...This...Dum-bum-bum Bum-bum-bum bum-bum-bum dramatic music HURLEY: Vincent. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: And then the true side of the character, which I believe is the scene where he's handing out all the food. guitar playing MICHAEL GIACCHINO: The Jin and Sun music has always been fun to do because they have this kind of epic love story. dramatic strings music YUNJIN KIM: I think it adds a lot to Sun's character and who she is. Whenever we do our episode of Sun and Jin, I make an immediate connection to the music. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: The Others have this simplistic thing, this low kind of...Bum, bum...where string instruments are plucking lowest strings. Then you just wait. There's this uncomfortable silence and then...again. When they first came, I was like, I had no clue who these people were. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Ben's theme was this really off-putting kind of...with these weird bends in the melody, very uncomfortable and evil. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: And yet, when we got to the episode that he ended up killing his father, you felt for him because you knew what he went through as a kid. So I was able to turn that evil music into something much more emotional, and kind of give you the true side of this character for a moment. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: So it just gets more complicated as it goes on for me. You almost need charts to keep track of it all. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: It's All Relative. Which one was this? MAN: Sayid... MICHAEL GIACCHINO: You don't know where these things go or grow into. When Jack gives his speech about how they all need to stick together, and I wrote this piece of music which became the Life & Death theme. JACK: If we can't live together...we're gonna die alone. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: As time went on, that theme ended up being used every time someone died or was about to die. And...And it evolved out of that scene, out of his speech. music MICHAEL GIACCHINO: It became kind of a storytelling process, making the format work for a concert. Which themes do we choose, which characters do we use as one piece of music, what characters can we wrap together? MICHAEL GIACCHINO: All right. So traveling theme, narration... TIM SIMONEC: Have him do a narration and I'll do the end of Kate, Sawyer and Jack. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: We were like, "Well, we have Jack, Kate and Sawyer. That's a triangle. All of those stories intertwine. Let's make that one piece of music." Then you have pieces...One was called Under the Knife, which was about when Jack was operating on Ben. That became its own piece. ominous music tension building tribal-like music JACK: Back away from the table. Back away from the table! Now! MICHAEL GIACCHINO: Concert music, you can just go places you couldn't go on screen. Pieces evolved into much bigger thematic pieces than I could have played them out on screen, on the show. So it was a really freeing experience. music ominous music suspenseful music beeping KATE: I can't leave without you. JACK: Yes, you are. Go. KATE: Jack, I can't! JACK: Go! Now! KATE: I can't! JACK: Kate! Damn it! Run! musical hit EVANGELINE LILLY: Watching the symphony was, uh, a reminder of how iconic our show is. applause EVANGELINE LILLY: I'm actually not doing something mundane and everyday. I'm doing something extraordinarily special. DANIEL DAE KIM: It was a perfect combination of music, uh, spoken word and beautiful writing. JORGE GARCIA: It was kind of fun to legitimize it, in a way. To do a performance of it and going, to be a part of it. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: We are lucky. We get to do something we love. But it's even better when you can share that with the people directly. We're working on getting it packaged so we can bring it to different cities, different countries. CARLTON CUSE: The symphony was one of those great moments that will always stand out to me in my history on Lost. To see Michael Giacchino with the Honolulu Symphony up there, getting all of the well-deserved recognition for what he contributes to the show was just so powerful. melancholy music CARLTON CUSE: In the first season of the show, the scene of the raft launch is just the most beautiful, moving and emotional thing. That moment came full circle when we did the symphony and Michael conducted and played that piece of music in front of an audience out there in the trade winds, on the beautiful grassy slope. It was really a fantastic experience. epic music DANIEL DAE KIM: The melody was so beautiful that it's something that I can hear 20 years from now, even five seconds of it, and will bring me back to shooting that sequence. DAMON LINDELOF: I think bad music tells you how to feel. And good music takes what you're already feeling and enhances it. Giacchino is always clearly in the latter category. J.J. ABRAMS: The first time that they set sail on the raft they built, it was like I defy you to find a movie that feels as epic and as emotional and sweeping as that. If you watch that sequence without sound, it's a different experience. I feel like to look at Lost without Michael Giacchino is not to look at Lost. MICHAEL GIACCHINO: I can't imagine any other show that would allow me to do as much as I've been able to do with the music. I think it will always be something, for me, that I look back on as one of the best things I ever got to work on. music silence finale ends Category:Transcripts Category:Season 4